Posted by technomaster:

Well, it's settled then. Dirk is approaching Bird's stratosphere; certainly he won't be up there until he wins a few titles. Of course, winning titles isn't everything, neither is the amazing perception of "clutch."

I don't think anything is settled other than some statistically derived parity of production numbers. But I don't think a person has yet weighed in who's watched them both who thinks they are in the same league. In the same sense I don't think Marbury is a spectacular PG even though only he and Oscar averaged 20/8 (and this is not the point when I will a show how fallacious that comparison is). Nor that Francis is a historic great even though only he Magic and Grant Hill averaged 20/5/5 over their first 5 years (or something like that.) Even Antoine Walker posted gaudy stats for some part of his career, but how "great" is he?

If you guys want to base player assessments on PER and the like be my guest. Heck, at one point in time Jerry Stackhouse had a higher PER than James Worthy. Weeeee...